The Renovation Diaries are a collaboration with our community in which we feature your step by step renovation progress and provide monetary support towards getting it done in style. See all of our Reno Diaries here.

As with any renovation, there is a lot of prep work to do in our backyard before any progress is made. And as with any renovation, your house is going to get dirty. The lack of any kind of finished surface outside means we are constantly battling with dirt being walked through the house, which is quite frustrating.

Random pole which we had to cut and remove.

But back to the work. We’ve discovered some weird and random things while digging up the backyard… I guess it’s to be expected in a 100 year old house. Lots of broken glass and crockery, some old pharmacy bottles, shoes, and old metal poles and stakes that didn’t seem to serve any purpose whatsoever. Here is Tommaso removing the biggest of these random poles — maybe an old street sign? It was quite long, so he cut it in half to make it easier to remove.

Our pavers and leveling sand has been delivered, so there is lots to do next week!

We employed our first professional help this week — we called in Jim’s digging to dig up and remove the additional layers of concrete and bricks that we uncovered last weekend. It was great being able to leave them at it – we could go to work, and come home to have it all out of our hair. It is an additional cost that we will have to factor into the budget, but we couldn’t face the days more digging we would have had to do – plus the additional cost of extra removal bins. It worked out much easier to have these guys in and out with minimal fuss. Bonus: Jim’s digging delivered some levelling sand and our pavers have been delivered, so next week we can start paving!